Maps, Drifts, Interventions and Inquiries:

What (Else) Can Independent Media Do?

Julie Perini & Kevin Van Meter (of Team Colors Collective)

13 September 2008 as part of the Portland Grassroots Media Camp

www.pdxmediacamp.org

Event Description:
“Maps, Drifts, Interventions and Inquiries: What
(Else) Can Independent Media Do?” will introduce
the participants to a number of techniques for
producing knowledge about our communities and
struggles, as well as opening pathways for dialog
and communication. Workshop participants will
learn about techniques gleaned from community
organizing, militant / co-research and interventionist
art traditions and will be involved in producing their
own surveys, maps, drifts, and inquiries with the
intent of creating participatory and dialogical
media.

Event Outline

1. Introduction to the Workshop & Activities

PRESENTATION
2. “Maps, Drifts, Interventions and Inquiries: What (Else) Can Independent Media
Do?” (5 minutes)
- How can media be use to create knowledge and dialog; how can media create
‘situations’, affects, moments and encounters; how can we use media to document art
interventions and artistic practice themselves and as part of campaigns and movements?

3. What is Militant & Co-Research? – Kevin’s Remarks (10 minutes)

- Whirlwinds as an example of Militant Research; introduction to other projects;
introduction to the purpose and practice of militant research. How do we breakdown the
divide between the subject of research and the researcher? Concepts and Practices:
Mapping, Inquiry & Dérive (Drift)

4. What is Interventionist Art? – Julie’s Remarks (10 minutes)

- How can art and activist media function together? Concepts, Practices & Examples of
Interventionist Art.
ACTIVITIES
5. Mapping: Using Portland as a Political Space (25 minutes)
- “sleep/rest/reproduce”, “obtain income”, “socialize”, “find knowledge”, “do politics”,
“create, activate & self-care”.

6. Inquiry & Encounter: A Survey of the Grassroots Media Camp (40 minutes)

7. Drifts, Art Interventions & Discussion (25 minutes)

RESULTS
All of the materials resulting from the workshop will be displayed for the remainder of
the Grassroots Media Camp. The maps of Portland we produce, the findings from the
inquiry and the notes from the drift will be available for review to workshop and other
conference participants.

Facilitator Biographies & Contact

JULIE PERINI is a video/film artist

and educator currently teaching at the
Pacific Northwest College of Art in
Portland and at Western Oregon
University in Monmouth, OR.
Recently relocated from the east coast,
she has over ten years of experience
working with independent and
alternative media art. Julie has taught
college courses, community
workshops, and high school programs
on video and digital media production,
film history and aesthetics. Perini can be contacted at: www.julieperini.org;
Julie@julieperini.org.

KEVIN VAN METER is a community organizer and

researcher (focusing on everyday resistance) originally
from Long Island and a member of the militant research
collective Team Colors. Most recently Van Meter as part
of Team Colors co-coordinated the one-off online journal
published by The Journal of Aesthetics and Protest Press
called "In the Middle of a Whirlwind: 2008 Convention
Protests, Movement and Movements", which is available
at www.inthemiddleofawhirlwind.info; Van Meter and the
collective can be contacted at: www.warmachines.info;
Kevin@warmachines.info.
 Concepts Informing the Workshop

Class Composition
Class composition analysis is a mode of intellectual practice that aims to both understand and intervene
politically on the composition of the working class. There are two moments that make up the composition
of the working class: the technical composition and the political composition, which roughly correspond to
the distinctions of class-in-itself and class for-itself elsewhere in the Marxist tradition. The technical
composition of the working class refers primarily to the organization of the labor process when it functions
relatively normally in the production of surplus value. In this sense technical composition includes
machinery, the skills of workers, disciplinary practices in the workplace, everything that enters into how the
spaces and times of work are distributed. The political composition of the working class refers to the
organizations of workers, formal or informal, by which workers act in and against the labor process: the
union, the party, the affinity group, the informal work group, etc. Political composition also includes the
tactics or practices that workers make use of in conflicts in and against work: absenteeism, strikes of
various types, mutual aid, marches, demonstrations, etc. Class composition analysis makes use of a range
of types of inquiry that resemble social and oral history, ethnography, journalism, and others. See co-
research, militant research. (Nate Holdren)

Co-Research
Co-research is a practice of intellectual production that does not accept a distinction between active
researcher and passive research subjects. At its best co-research aims for a productive cooperation that
transforms both into active participants in producing knowledge and in transforming themselves. There is a
long history of co-research in Italy and elsewhere, but not always under the name co-research. See Militant
Research. (Nate Holdren)

Culture Jamming
Culture jamming could be defined as an art movement, although this too may be insufficient to cover the
full spectrum of activities identified as culture jamming. Culture jamming has been characterized as a form
of public activism which is generally in opposition to commercialism, and the vectors of corporate image.
However, this also is too narrow a definition to cover all culture jamming activities (that definition more
closely fits Subvertising). Some culture jamming takes aim at these power structures because they are part
of the dominant culture, but any other aspects of the dominant culture are also fair game for culture
jamming. (Wikipedia)

Dérive (Drift)
“One of the basic situationist practices is the dérive, a technique of rapid passage through varied
ambiences. Dérives involve playful-constructive behavior and awareness of psychogeographical effects,
and are thus quite different from the classic notions of journey or stroll.
In a dérive one or more persons during a certain period drop their relations, their work and leisure
activities, and all their other usual motives for movement and action, and let themselves be drawn by the
attractions of the terrain and the encounters they find there. Chance is a less important factor in this activity
than one might think: from a dérive point of view cities have psychogeographical contours, with constant
currents, fixed points and vortexes that strongly discourage entry into or exit from certain zones.”
(Guy Debord, Theory of the Dérive. 1958)

“Looking for a procedure that would be able to capture their mobile and contingent everyday lives, they
found inspiration in the Situationist technique of drifting. Situationist researchers wander in the city,
allowing for encounters, interactions and micro-events to be the guide of their urban itineraries. The result
was a psycho-geography based on haphazard coincidences. This version though is seen as appropriate for a
bourgeois male individual without commitments, and not satisfactory for a precaria. Instead of an exotic
itinerary, the precarias version of drifting consists of a situated and directed trajectory through everyday
life settings.” (Precarias a la Deriva 2004)
Détournement
In détournement, an artist reuses elements of well-known media to create a new work with a different
message, often one opposed to the original. The term "détournement", borrowed from the French,
originated with the Situationist International; a similar term more familiar to English speakers would be
"turnabout" or "derailment", although these terms are not used in academia and the arts world as they are
inherently 'anti-art,' often involving the blatant theft and sabotage of existing elements. Détournement is
similar to satirical parody, but employs more direct reuse or faithful mimicry of the original works rather
than constructing a new work which merely alludes strongly to the original. It may be contrasted with
recuperation, in which originally subversive works and ideas are themselves appropriated by mainstream
media. (Wikipedia)

Interventionist Art
An art intervention is an interaction with a previously existing artwork, audience or venue/space. It has the
auspice of conceptual art and is commonly a form of performance art. Although intervention by its very
nature carries an implication of subversion, it is now accepted as a legitimate form of art and is often
carried out with the endorsement of those in positions of authority over the artwork, audience or
venue/space to be intervened in. However, unendorsed (i.e. illicit) interventions are common and lead to
debate as to the distinction between art and vandalism. By definition it is a challenge, or at the very least a
comment, related to the earlier work or the theme of that work, or to the expectations of a particular
audience, and more likely to fulfill that function to its full potential when it is unilateral, although in these
instances, it is almost certain that it will be viewed by authorities as unwelcome, if not vandalism, and not
art. (Wikipedia)

Psycho-geography
The study of the precise effects of geographical setting, consciously managed or not, acting directly on the
mood or behavior of the individual. (Julie Perini)

Radical Cartography
Radical Cartography is “the practice of mapmaking that subverts conventional notions in order to actively
promote social change”. (An Atlas of Radical Cartography) “It is time to draw new maps, maps of
resistance that can be used to attack the visible and invisible fences and walls, to tear them down or sail
around them quietly, to hollow them out and to undermine them” (NoLager)

Relational Aesthetics
Relational Art (or relationalism) is defined by Nicolas Bourriaud, co-founder and former co-director of
Paris art gallery Palais de Tokyo as "a set of artistic practices which take as their theoretical and practical
point of departure the whole of human relations and their social context, rather than an independent and
private space." Artworks are judged based upon the inter-human relations which they represent, produce or
prompt. (Wikipedia)

Militant Research
Militant research has many meanings. It can be research carried out with the aim of producing knowledge
useful for militant or activist ends. Militant research can also be research that is carried in a fashion in
keeping with the aims and values of radical militants. In some parts of the Marxist tradition militant
research is a moment of class composition analysis, and is sometimes referred to as workers' inquiry, after a
document written by Marx in 1880. See co-research, class composition analysis. (Nate Holdren)
 Additional Resource & References
TEXTS
An Atlas of Radical Cartography. Lize Mogel & Alexis Bhagat (eds.), (Los Angles: The Journal of
Aesthetics and Protest Press, 2007) www.an-atlas.com; www.joaap.org. See the one-sheet at the end of the
packet.

Constituent Imagination: Militant Investigation // Collective Theorization. Erika Biddle, David Graeber &
Stevphen Shukaits, (Oakland: AK Press, 2006) www.constituentimagination.net; www.akpress.org. See the
one-sheet at the end of the packet.

In the Middle of a Whirlwind: 2008 Convention Protests, Movement and Movements. Team Colors
Collective (eds.), (Los Angles: The Journal of Aesthetics and Protest Press, 2008)
www.inthemiddleofawhirlwind.info; www.joaap.org.
- While the collection addresses many of the issues and concepts raised in this workshop, we would like to
call your attention to two particular articles: “Getting to Know Your City & the Social Movements that
Call it Home” by Daniel Tucker of AREA Chicago & “Transatlantic Translations: A Trilogy of Insurgent
Knowledges” by Producciones Translocales of the Counter-Cartographies Collective.

Nowtopia: How Pirate Programmers, Outlaw Bicyclists, and Vacant-lot Gardeners are Inventing the
Future Today. Chris Carlsson, (Oakland: AK Press, 2008) www.chriscarlsson,com;www.akpress.org.

For additional theoretical texts visit the Team Colors website resources page: www.warmchines.info

ORGANIZATIONS & COLLECTIVES

16 Beaver Group (NYC): www.16beavergroup.org
AREA Chicago (US): www.areachicago.org
Counter-Cartographies Collective (US): www.countercartographies.org
Critical Art Ensemble (US): www.critical-art.net
Glow Lab & Conflux Festival (NYC): www.glowlab.com & www.confluxfestival.org
Precarias a la Derive (Spain): www.sindominio.net/karakola/precarias.htm
Prol-Position (UK / Germany): www.prol-position.net
Turbulence: Ideas for Movement (UK): www.turbulence.org.uk
Radical Reference (US): www.radicalreference.info
Reclaim the Streets (International, link to London group): www.rts.gn.apc.org
Yes Men (US): www.theyesmen.org

Resources here in Portland:

Red76: www.red76.com
The M.O.S.T. / MOSTLANDIA: www.mostlandia.com
 Inquiry & Encounter: A Survey of the Grassroots Media Camp

Sample Survey from the book by Kolinko (Germany; August 2002)

Hotlines - Call Centre | Inquiry | Communism
www.nadir.org/kolinko

We wrote this questionnaire for the call centre-inquiry. We have not changed it much, even though the
interviews have shown that it is too long. It hast helped us to formulate the important question more
precisely, to understand the organization of work, the machinery, the co-operation. For further projects of
inquiry it has to be adjusted to the area (factory, construction, university, housework etc.). It can be a first
step to collect facts and get an overview. Here it is:

Company
1. Which company do you work for?
2. To what sector does the company belong?
3. To which bigger trust does the company belong?
4. What is produced there or what kind of services are offered?
5. What function does the call centre have in the company?
6. In which call centre department are you working?
7. What other call centre departments are there in the company?
8. When was the call centre set up?
9. Did the company get state subsidies?
10. How many people are working altogether at the location or for the company?
11. Is the call centre out-sourced or has it just been set up?
12. Were already existing call centre joined together?
13. What has changed through that, concerning work conditions?
14. Was the same work you are doing in the call centre done in other ways before?
15. Which work routines or technologies have changed through the set up of the call centre?
16. Why do you think does this call centre exists?
17. What explanation does the management give on the question of why the call centre exists?

Region
18. Are there many call centre in your region?
19. What sectors do they operate in?
20. Why are they concentrated in your region?
21. What do managers or politicians say about this?
22. Is there a training scheme for call centre agents offered in your region?
23. Who offers these schemes?
24. Is the state employment office or social service agency putting pressure on people to work in call centre
or take part in the training scheme?

Workers
25. How many people work in the call centre?
26. How many are female, how many are male?
27. How many immigrants work there?
28. Where do they come from?
29. How many are part-time workers, how many are full-time?
30. Has the proportion of part-timers and full-timers changed?
31. What various working time models exist there?
32. In your opinion, what kind of people start working in call centre?
33. Why do they start working there?
34. Do you think people in the call centre come from similar backgrounds and get along well, or do they
differ from each other very much?
Job or profession
35. How long have you / the others worked there so far?
36. Did you / the others already work in other call centres?
37. Why did you / the others stop working there?
38. What did you / the others do or where did you work before that?
39. How did you find the call centre job?
40. Why did you / the others apply for the call centre job?
41. Do you / the others want to work there for a long time?
42. Do you want to have another job within the call centre? Which one and why?

Qualification
43. What criteria did the management apply when hiring people?
44. What kind of job training or skill did you have before?
45. Does the management organise training to qualify workers?
46. How long does this training last?
47. What is taught or what have you learned there?
48. What do you think about the training now, where you are working?
49. Did you have the necessary skills before or did you learn them 'on the job', while working at the Call
Centre?
50. In your opinion, which skills does a call centre worker need?

Methods of working
51. When working on the telephone, which actions do you perform?
52. Who is giving you direct orders?
53. Apart from those, who has a position superior to you?
54. With which technical devices are you working?
55. Which functions do these devices have?
56. Can you operate the devices properly?
57. Do you like working with the devices?
58. What do you like about this work in general?
59. What do you dislike about it?

Co-operation
60. Are you working together, co-operatively, with other workers?
61. In what way do you cooperate?
62. Do you have contact with other departments, branches or work sites?
63. Are these contacts important for the work?
64. How do you find the information you need to do your job?
65. Are you dealing with a call on you own or do you also put calls through to other departments?

Problems with the organisation of work

66. What kind of problems come up frequently concerning the organisation of work?
67. Are there frequent failures of the technical equipment?
68. If so, when there are problems, how do you deal with them?
69. What role does co-operation with your colleagues have in this context?
70. What role do the managers and supervisors have?
71. Is it enough to follow the official work routines in order to manage the work, or do you also have to
fulfil other functions as well?
72. Have you been given additional work since you began?
73. How did you react to that?
74. In your opinion, who is organizing the work?
75. Is the organization of the work sensible?
76. Why not?
77. Why are there managers and supervisors?
78. In your opinion, why are there so many workers in one office in call centre?
Work intensity
79. How or what is determining the pace of work?
80. At what rhythm are you being called or are you calling up?
81. Is the rhythm of the calls and your work speed determined by the telephone equipment?
82. Is the rhythm of calls leaving you time for talking to colleagues about other things?
83. What do you talk with them about?
84. How do you manage to make the work easier or to have unofficial breaks?
85. Do you think the job is stressful? What exactly is stressful about it?
86. How do you feel after a working day?

Control
87. Are you being controlled and how?
88. Who is controlling you?
89. Why are you being controlled?
90. Which criteria are being used in controlling you (amount of calls, duration, etc.)?
91. What happens if you are making serious mistakes or if you are not following orders?
92. Does that happen often?
93. Are you managing to get around the controls?
94. Does it happen that people do something wrong deliberately in order to have breaks or fool the
supervisor?

Wage
95. How much do you earn?
96. Does everybody earn the same?
97. Why not?
98. Is there a wage scale or are there wage groups?
99. What criteria are used to get a pay raise?
100. Does the wage depend on performance?
101. Are you getting additional payments for certain working hours (at night, on weekends...)?
102. How does management justify the wage differences?
103. What do your colleagues have to say concerning wages?

Working hours
104. What does your contract say about your working hours?
105. Are you working overtime, special shifts, etc.?
106. How long does it take to get to work and back home?
107. What time does the Call Centre open and close daily and how long do people call up?
108. Is the Call Centre open on Saturday, Sunday and public holidays?
109. What kind of shift patterns exist (e.g., variable shifts or always on early / night shift etc.)?
110. How is the shift schedule made?
111. Do you have a say in the matter?
112. Are there work time accounts where you can (are forced to) accumulate working hours and take time
off later?
113. When do you have breaks?
114. Do the workers have breaks together?
115. Do you have additional breaks due to the fact that you are working in front of computer screens?
116. How many days holiday do you have?
117. Are you satisfied with the working hours, the shift system etc.?
118. What is not satisfying to you about all that?

Unions
119. Is there a negotiated collective agreement?
120. Does that cover only the location, the whole company or the sector?
121. What exactly is regulated there?
122. Who has signed it with management?
123. Is there a works council (official worker representation body on the company level)?
124. What is it doing?
125. Which union is active within the call centre?
126. What is it doing?
127. What do you / the other workers think about the union and/or the works council?
128. What do you expect of the union or the works council?

Services
129. What exactly is your service?
130. Why is this service getting 'produced'?
131. Who has an interest in it?
132. What significance does friendliness, customer oriented service etc. have?
133. Do you consider your job as necessary for society?
134. What does the management have to say about that?
135. What do the other workers say about that?

Conflicts
136. While working, do you talk a lot about the problems in the call centre?
137. What are you talking about exactly?
138. Are / were there conflicts among the workers?
139. What was the problem and what happened?
140. Are / were there any bigger conflicts with the management?
141. What happened exactly?
142. Will there be (more) conflicts around the situation on the job?
143. Have you already been threatened with out-sourcing or closure of the call centre?
144. What do you think about this threat?

Discussion
145. What is the difference between work in a call centre and work in a factory, other offices or in a
hospital?
146. In the future, will more people work under conditions similar to call centres?
147. Will there still be Call Centres in a few years?
148. What will change about the work conditions?
149. How do you imagine work and life will be in ten or twenty years?
150. Who will determine how the situation will be in ten or twenty years?
151. What do you think about the possibility of organising with other people for an improvement of the
situation?
152. With whom would you organise?
153. What could you do to put through your demands?
154. What do you want to put through or change?

Questionnaire
155. What do you think about this questionnaire?
156. How can it be improved?
 Inquiry & Encounter: A Survey of the Grassroots Media Camp

Sample Survey from the Karl Marx’s “A Workers' Inquiry”

First published:in La Revue socialiste, April 20, 1880;

Not a single government, whether monarchy or bourgeois republic, has yet ventured to undertake a serious
inquiry into the position of the French working class. But what a number of investigations have been
undertaken into crises — agricultural, financial, industrial, commercial, political!

The blackguardly features of capitalist exploitation which were exposed by the official investigation
organized by the English government and the legislation which was necessitated there as a result of these
revelations (legal limitation of the working day to 10 hours, the law concerning female and child labor,
etc.), have forced the French bourgeoisie to tremble even more before the dangers which an impartial and
systematic investigation might represent. In the hope that maybe we shall induce a republican government
to follow the example of the monarchical government of England by likewise organizing a far reaching
investigation into facts and crimes of capitalist exploitation, we shall attempt to initiate an inquiry of this
kind with those poor resources which are at our disposal. We hope to meet in this work with the support of
all workers in town and country who understand that they alone can describe with full knowledge the
misfortunes form which they suffer and that only they, and not saviors sent by providence, can energetically
apply the healing remedies for the social ills which they are prey. We also rely upon socialists of all schools
who, being wishful for social reform, must wish for an exact and positive knowledge of the conditions in
which the working class — the class to whom the future belongs -works and moves.

These statements of labor's grievances are the first act which socialist democracy must perform in order to
prepare the way for social regeneration.

The following hundred questions are the most important. In replies the number of the corresponding
question should be given. It is not essential to reply to every question, but our recommendation is that
replies should be as detailed and comprehensive as possible. The name of the working man or woman who
is replying will not be published without special permission but the name and address should be given so
that if necessary we can send communication.

Replies should be sent to the Secretary of the Revue Socialiste, M.Lecluse, 28, rue royale, saint cloud, nr.
Paris.

The replies will be classified and will serve as material for special studies, which will be published in the
Revue and will later be reprinted as a separate volume.

1. What is your trade?

2. Does the shop in which you work belong to a capitalist or to a limited company/ State the names of the
capitalist owners or directors of the company.
3. State the number of persons employed.
4. State their age and sex.
5. What is the youngest age at which children are taken off (boys or girls)?
6. State the number of overseers and other employees who are not rank and file hired workers.
7. Are their apprentices? How many?
8. Apart from the usual and regularly employed workers, are there others who come in at definite
seasons?
9. Does your employer' undertaking work exclusively or chiefly for local orders, or for the home market
generally, or for export abroad?
10. Is the shop in a village, or in a town? State the locality.
11. If your shop is in the country, is there sufficient work in the factory for your existence or are you
obliged to combine it with agricultural labor/
12. Do you work with your hands or with the help of machinery?
 13. State details as to the division of labor in your factory.
14. Is stream used as motive power?
15. State the number of rooms in which the various branches of production are carried on. Describe the
specialty in which you are engaged. Describe not only the technical side, but the muscular and nervous
strain required, and its general effect on the health of the workers.
16. Describe the hygienic conditions in the workshops; the size of the rooms, space allotted to every
worker, ventilation, temperature, plastering, lavatories, general cleanliness, noise of machinery, metallic
dust, dampness, etc.
17. Is there any municipal or government supervision of hygienic conditions in the workshops?
18. Are there in your industry particular effluvia which are harmful for the health and produce specific
diseases among the workers?
19. Is the shop overcrowded with machinery?
20. Are safety measures to prevent accidents applied to the engine, transmission and machinery?
21. Mention the accidents which have taken place in your personal knowledge.
22. If you work in a mine, state the safety measures adopted by your employer to ensure ventilation and
prevent explosions and other accidents.
23. If you work in a chemical factory, at an iron works, at a factory producing metal goods, or in any other
industry involving specific dangers to health, describe the safety measures adopted by your employer.
24. What is your workshop lit up by (gas, oil, etc.)?
25. Are there sufficient safety appliances against fire?
26. Is the employer legally bound to compensate the worker or his family in case of accident?
27. If not, has he ever compensated those who suffered accidents while working for his enrichment?
28. Is first-aid organized in your workshop?
29. If you work at home, describe the conditions of your work room. Do you use only working tools or
small machines? Do you have recourse to the help of your children or other persons (adult or children, male
or female)? Do you work for private clients, or for an employer? Do you deal with him direct or trough an
agent?
30. State the number of hours you work daily, and the number of working days during the week.
31. State the number of holidays in the course of a year.
32. What breaks are there during the working day?
33. Do you take meals at definite intervals, or irregularly? Do you eat in the workshop or outside?
34. Does work go on during meal times?
35. If steam is used, when is it started and when stopped?
36. Does work go on at night?
37. State the number of hours of work of children and young people under 16.
38. Are there shifts if children and young people replacing each other alternately during working hours?
39. Has the government or municipality applied the laws regulating child labor? Do the employers submit
to these laws?
40. Do schools exist for children and young people employed in your trade? If they exist, in what hours do
the lessons take place? Who manages the schools? What is taught in them?
41. If work takes place both night and day, what is the order of the shifts?
42. What is the usual lengthening of the working day in times of good trade?
43. Are the machines cleaned by workers specially hired for that purpose, or do the workers employed on
these machines clean them free, during their working day?
44. What rules and fines exist for latecomers? When does the working day begin, when it is resumed after
the dinner hour break?
45. How much time do you lose in coming to the workshop and returning home?
46. What agreements have you with your employer? Are you engaged by the day, week, month, etc.?
47. What conditions are laid down regarding dismissals or leaving employment?
48. In the event of a breach of agreement, what penalty can be inflicted on the employer, if he is the cause
of the breach?
49. What penalty can be inflicted on the worker if he is the cause of the breach?
50. If there are apprentices, what are their conditions of contract?
51. Is your work permanent or casual?
52. Does work in your trade take place only at particular seasons, or is the work usually distributed more
or less equally throughout the year? If you work only at definite seasons, how do you live in the intervals?
 53. Are you paid time or piece rate?
54. If you are paid time rate, is it by the hour or by the day?
55. Do you receive additions to your wages for overtime? How much?
56. If you receive piece rates, how are they fixed? Of you are employed in industries in which the work
done is measured by quantity or weight, as in the mines, don't your employers or their clerks resort to
trickery, in order to swindle you out of part of your wages/
57. If you are paid piece rate, isn't the quality of the goods used as a pretext for wrongful deductions form
your wages?
58. Whatever wages you get, whether piece or time rate, when is it paid to you; in other words, how long
is the credit you give your employer before receiving payment for the work you have already carried out?
Are you paid a week later, month, etc.?
59. Have you noticed that delay in the payment of your wages forces you often to resort to the pawnshops,
paying rates of high interest there, and depriving yourself of things you need: or incurring debts with the
shopkeepers, and becoming their victim because you are their debtor? Do you know of cases where
workers have lost their wages owing to the ruin or bankruptcy of their employers?
60. Are wages paid direct by the employer, or by his agents ((contractors, etc.).)?
61. If wages are paid by contractors or other intermediaries, what are the conditions of your contract?
62. What is the amount of your money wages by the day week?
63. What are the wages of the women and children employed together with you in the same shop?
64. What was the highest daily wage last month in your shop?
65. What was the highest piece wage last month?
66. What were your own wages during the same time, and if you have a family, what were the wages of
your wife and children?
67. Are wages paid entirely in money, or in some other form?
68. If you rent a lodging from your employer, on what conditions ? Does he not deduct the rent from your
wages?
69. What are the prices of necessary commodities, for example:
(a) Rent of your lodging, conditions of lease, number of rooms, persons living in them, repair,
insurance, buying and repairing furniture, heating, lighting, water, etc.
(b) Food — bread, meat, vegetables, potatoes, etc, dairy produce, eggs, fish, butter, vegetable, oil, lard,
sugar, salt, groceries, coffee, chicory, beer, wine, etc., tobacco.
(c) Clothing for parents and children, laundry, keeping clean, bath, soap, etc.
(d) Various expenses, such as correspondence, loans, payments to pawnbroker, children's schooling and
teaching a trade, newspapers, books, etc., contributions to friendly societies, strikes, unions, resistance
associations, etc.
(e) Expenses, if any necessitated by your duties.
(f) Taxes.
70. Try and draw up a weekly and yearly budget of your income and expenditure for self and family.
71. Have you noticed, in your personal experience, a bigger rise in the price of immediate necessities, e.g.,
rent, food, etc., than in wages?
72. State the changes in wages which you know of.
73. Describe wage increases during so-called prosperity periods.
74. Describe any interruptions in employment caused by changes in fashions and partial and general
crises. Describe your own involuntary rest periods.
75. Compare the price of the commodities you manufacture or the services you render with the price of
your labor.
76. Quote any cases known to you of workers being driven out as a result of introduction of machinery or
other improvements.
77. In connection with the development of machinery and the growth of the productiveness of labor, has
its intensity and duration increased or decreased?
78. Do you know of any cases of increases in wages as a result of improvements in production?
79. Have you ever known any rank and file workers who could retire from employment at the age of 50
and live on the money earned by them as wage workers.
80. How many years can a worker of average health be employed in your trade?
81. Do any resistance associations exist in your trade and how are they led? Send us their rules and
regulations.
 82. How many strikes have taken place in your trade that you are aware of?
83. How long did these strikes last?
84. Were they general or partial strikes?
85. Were they for the object of increasing wages, or were they organized to resist a reduction of wages, or
connected with the length of the working day, or prompted by other motives?
86. What were their results?
87. Tell us of the activity of the courts of arbitration.
88. Were strikes in your trade ever supported by strikes of workers belonging to other trades?
89. Describe the rules and fines laid down by your employer for the management of his hired workers.
90. Have there ever existed associations among the employers with the object of imposing a reduction of
wages, a longer working day, of hindering strikes and generally imposing their own wishes?
91. Do you know of cases when the government made unfair use of the armed forces, to place them at the
disposal of the employers against their wage workers?
92. Are you aware of any cases when the government intervened to protect the workers from the
extortions of the employers and their illegal associations?
93. Does the government strive to secure the observance of the existing factory laws against the interests
of the employers? Do its inspectors do their duty?
94. Are there in your workshop or trade any friendly societies to provide for accidents, sickness, death,
temporary incapacity, old age, etc.? Send us their rules and regulations.
95. Is membership of these societies voluntary or compulsory? Are their funds exclusively controlled by
the workers?
96. If the contributions are compulsory, and are under the employers' control, are they deducted from
wages? Do the employers pay interest for this deduction? Do they return the amounts deducted to the
worker when he leaves employment or is dismissed? Do you know of any cases when the workers have
benefited from the so-called pensions schemes, which are controlled by the employers, but the initial
capital of which is deducted beforehand from the workers' wages?
97. Are there cooperative guilds in your trade? How are they controlled? Do they hire workers for wages
in the same ways as the capitalists? Send us their rules and regulations.
98. Are there any workshops in your trade in which payment is made to the workers partly in the form of
wages and partly in the form of so-called profit sharing? Compare the sums received by these workers and
the sums received by other workers who don't take place in so-called profit sharing. State the obligations of
the workers living under this system. may they go on strike, etc. or are they only permitted to be devoted
servants of their employers?
99. What are the general physical, intellectual and moral conditions of life of the working men and women
employed in your trade?
100. General remarks.
 Constituent Imagination:
Militant Investigations, Collective
Theorization
Stevphen Shukaitis & David Graeber
with Erika Biddle
ISBN: 1-904859-35-6

AK Press – Spring 2007

Sales Handle:
From the ivory tower to the barricades!
Radical intellectuals explore the relationship
between research and resistance.

Catalog Description
What is the relationship of radical theory to
movements for social change? In a world
where more and more global struggles are
refusing vanguard parties and authoritarian
practices, does the idea of the detached
intellectual, observing events from on high,
make sense anymore? In this powerful and and unabashedly militant collection, over two
dozen academic authors and engaged intellectuals--including Antonio Negri and
Colectivo Situaciones--provide some challenging answers. In the process, they redefine
the nature of intellectual practice itself.

The book opens with the editors’ provocative history of the academy’s inherent
limitations and possibilities. The essays that follow cover a broad range: embedded
intellectuals in increasingly corporatized universities, research projects in which factory
workers and academics work side by side, revolutionary ethnographies of the global
justice movement, meditations on technology from the branches of a Scottish tree-sit.
What links them all is a collective and expansive reimagining of engaged intellectual
work in the service of social change. In a cultural climate in where right-wing watchdog
groups seem to have radical academics on the run, this unapologetic anthology is a breath
of fresh air.

Stevphen Shukaitis is a research fellow at the University of London, Queen Mary and
member of the Autonomedia Editorial Collective..

David Graeber is an anthropologist and activist living in New York. He is the author of
Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology and Towards an Anthropological Theory of
Value.

www.constituentimagination.net
www.akpress.org